Ontario has hit peak ribfest. This is a distinctly heartland phenomenon: More than two-million people will visit one of the province’s 65 ribfests this summer. (There are only three dedicated ribfests in British Columbia; Alberta has two.)

“Sound is the forgotten flavour sense,” says experimental psychologist Charles Spence. In this episode of Gastropod, we discover how manipulating sound can transform our experience of food and drink, making stale crisps taste fresh, adding the sensation of cream to black coffee, or boosting the savory, peaty notes in whiskey.

"For almost 70 years, hot chicken was made and sold primarily in Nashville’s black neighborhoods. I started to suspect the story of hot chicken could tell me something powerful about race relations in Nashville, especially as the city tries to figure out what it will be in the future." Rachel L. Martin, "How Hot Chicken Really Happened," from The Bitter Southerner.
posted by MonkeyToes
on Jul 21, 2015 -
40 comments

Here is the story of The Day Jacques Pépin Saved My Life. That’s how I tell it, anyway —at parties, over dinner, on those occasions when a friend finds himself drowning in his own life and I’m cast as an unlikely dispenser of wisdom. That’s when I try to assure him that salvation can come in the most unlikely of guises: in the guise, say, of Jacques Pépin, who, when I, too, was lost and deep in dark waters, came along and showed me the way to back to the light.
posted by Shmuel510
on Jul 3, 2015 -
24 comments

"The idea is that Hannibal is always eating people, regardless of what he’s feeding you. So I wanted it to look like something that could be lamb’s tongue but probably was a people tongue. Lambs’ tongues are so homely, and once you cook them they just look creepy and unappetizing, and what I want more than anything is for the food to look so delicious that you want to reach into the screen and try it, even though you know it’s people. It’s the personification of Hannibal. He’s the Devil. Why do you like him? Why do you want to get to know him? Why do you want to eat these tongues? They’re people!"

This was a world that never quite fit me. I was unnaturally hungry and never found something that could satisfy that hunger. No job kept me. From desks to barns to the muffling din of factories, the concept of a profession was foreign. No drug quieted me for more than a few hours. No friend or lover ever lasted for more than a few days. My family had long since receded into the gray haze of memories.

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is currently living on board the International Space Station for her long duration mission Futura. In this video Samantha shows us how she manages to cook one of her bonus food recipes in microgravity: a quinoa salad with dried tomatoes, mackerel and leek cream, all wrapped in a warm tortilla. [via TwistedSifter]

Here's what happens when a man eats nothing but food made for women.When I began my exploration of gendered food items, I was hoping for a dramatic payoff.... Instead, I got a pile of cardboard packaging and confirmation of my thesis: marketing something as “for women” -- the pinks and purples, the low-calorie labels, the suggestions that life is just sooooo crazy and women need to take a break with a thumbnail-sized brownie -- is the dumbest gimmick in food marketing.
posted by katie
on Jun 25, 2015 -
115 comments

The 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) report, submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, makes a historic change: for the first time since 1980, the report no longer recommends the restriction of dietary cholesterol nor of total dietary fat. An article published today in JAMA calls on HHS and USDA to heed the DGAC report. The article goes on to praise the report's new emphasis: reducing consumption of sugar and refined carbohydrates, and increasing consumption of whole foods (even those high in fats).
posted by overeducated_alligator
on Jun 23, 2015 -
124 comments

To Live and Dine in L.A. is a multi-platform project of The Library Foundation of Los Angeles based on the extraordinary menu collection of The Los Angeles Public Library.

The entire project, which includes a book, an exhibition, and a variety of city-wide public programs and media events, is dedicated to curating and mobilizing the Library’s collection of historic L.A. menus in order to explore both the food history of the city and the city’s contemporary struggles with food insecurity, food deserts, and youth hunger.

The New York Times has been around long enough to report on more or less everything, and its First Glimpses feature occasionally dives into the archives to see when some notable thing was mentioned for the very first time. This week, it's cheeseburgers. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan
on May 27, 2015 -
37 comments

Why would I, who learned to cook from Culinary Luddites, who grew up in a family that, in Elizabeth David’s words, produced their “own home-cured bacon, ham and sausages . . . churned their own butter, fed their chickens and geese, cherished their fruit trees, skinned and cleaned their own hares” (well, to be honest, not the geese and sausages), not rejoice at the growth of Culinary Luddism? Why would I (or anyone else) want to be thought “an obtuse consumer”? Or admit to preferring unreal food for unreal people? Or to savoring inauthentic cuisine?
The answer is not far to seek: because I am an historian.A Plea For Culinary Modernism
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants
on May 23, 2015 -
79 comments

"I have a day job in Washington, D.C., as a food critic. I’ve done it for ten years. During that time, the city has become bigger and more cosmopolitan, the restaurant scene has evolved from that of a steak & potatoes town to that of a vibrant metropolis, and people now talk excitedly about going out to eat. But what no one talks about is the almost total absence of black faces in that scene." Todd Kliman's "Coding and Decoding Dinner" explores the racial divide in D.C. dining for the Oxford American.
posted by MonkeyToes
on May 15, 2015 -
43 comments

California's crippling drought has prompted conservation efforts, such as replacing grass lawns and minding how long you leave the tap water running. But what about the food on your plate? Agriculture uses 80% of California's water supply, and producing what you eat can require a surprising amount of water. The LA Times' Interactive Water Footprint tells you How much water is used to produce your food?[more inside]
posted by chavenet
on Apr 22, 2015 -
42 comments

All I did was write personal essays inspired by old community cookbooks I found in secondhand stores. Strictly speaking, my food writing wasn’t technically about food.
John T. said that didn’t matter. He wanted me to explore “trash food,” because, as he put it, “you write about class.”
posted by zeptoweasel
on Apr 15, 2015 -
38 comments

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